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60
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47
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45
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88
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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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63
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29
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61
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66
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59
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79
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64
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69
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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Frida

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 38 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 28 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Romance
Written by:
Hayden Herrera (book Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo)
Clancy Sigal
Diane Lake
Gregory Nava and Anna Thomas
Directed by: Julie Taymor
Release Date:
Theatrical: October 25, 2002
DVD: June 10, 2003
Running Time: 120 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for sexuality/nudity and language
Starring Salma Hayek, Alfred Molina, Geoffrey Rush, Ashley Judd, Antonio Banderas, Edward Norton, Valeria Golino, and Saffron Burrows
Chronicles the life Frida Kahlo (Hayek) shared openly and unflinchingly with her mentor and husband, Diego Rivera (Molina), as this young couple took the art by storm. (Miramax)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Across the Universe Titus
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Sometimes we feel as if the film careens from one colorful event to another without respite, but sometimes it must have seemed to Frida Kahlo as if her life did, too.
Read Full Review >New York Post Jonathan Foreman
The most effective moments in Taymor's gorgeous, surprisingly romantic Frida are those that evoke the visual world from which Kahlo's work was formed or the paintings themselves, often using clever animation and other special effects.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
The film seems a mad mix of staid PBS bio-drama, flamboyant musical comedy and surreal cartoon nightmare.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
A dynamic portrait of an artist by an artist, one as wry, audacious and erotically charged as its flamboyant subject.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
Hayek throws herself into this dream Hispanic role with a teeth-clenching gusto. She strikes a potent chemistry with Molina and she gradually makes us believe she is Kahlo.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
While the script of Frida struggles at times to be something more than an ordinary and-then-this-happened biography, there's a buoyancy to the direction and acting that make the film special.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf
The bulk of the film showcases some of the best direction of actors this year.
Read Full Review >Variety Deborah Young
Salma Hayek makes the character an icon of female independence, courage and nonconformity, forecasting special appeal for women viewers.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
Endlessly interesting. It's about people who thought ideas and art mattered, which makes it a rarity today.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Alfred Molina makes an excellent foil as the easygoing, philandering Rivera, whose public murals were the exact opposite of Frida's private canvases.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
Visually, this movie is exquisite. Narratively, well, that's a more banal story.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
Frida, the kaleidoscopic drama based on the life of the Mexican painter/feminist/icon Frida Kahlo, was directed by Julie Taymor, which is the movie's first blessing.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Dana Stevens
At its best when it forsakes earnest psychological exposition for magic realism, when, instead of trying to explain Kahlo's life, it conjures the moods and sensations that fed her art.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Meredity Brody
This is the Classics Illustrated version of Kahlo's story--fun mostly for the sets and the clothes.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
A romance for the deeply romantic, which means that some people will certainly view it as cynical.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
Swank and splashy as it is, Frida leaves the lurking suspicion that Taymor might have preferred to stage her pageant as a puppet show.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
If you want rich folk-art colors, brainy spectacle, and breezy soap opera, then Frida is the biopic for you.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
As directed by Taymor, it's a competent and nicely designed biopic that for all of the director's attempts to link surrealist film imagery with Hayek's depiction of Kahlo somehow manages to be generally lackluster.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
It's too bad that this long-awaited movie didn't go further than faithfully re-creating Kahlo's artwork and her studied look. Her passionate and tragically short life (she died at 47) is ideal Hollywood material, but the audience is left wanting a more in-depth portrait.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
Save for two spectacularly impressionistic sequences, Taymor brings little of that imagination to Frida, a turgid and conventional biopic that skips through the major incidents in Kahlo's life without giving them any special resonance, or even much visual panache.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Tim Merrill
Frida favors us with plenty of color, a feast of eye candy. As food for the soul, however...there are always her paintings.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
Smart, willful, and perverse, this Frida is nobody's servant, and the tiny Hayek plays her with head held high. You may want to laugh now and then, but you won't look away. [11 November 2002, p. 195]
Washington Post Desson Thomson
Ultimately, the movie's biggest crime is its inability to convey the delicate, damaged texture of Kahlo's life, but also the triumph of her will over intimidating defeat.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
A revolutionary life has rarely felt less edgy, or the biography of an iconoclast more bourgeois.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Ella Taylor
There's something oddly moving about the film purely as a love story between two people who were more alike than was good for them, yet somehow stuck it out. What we see in Frida is not Kahlo the painter, but Kahlo the love of Rivera's life, as he was of hers.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann
A domestic melodrama with weak dialogue and biopic cliches.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Mostly, though, Hayek's problem is one of physical miscasting. She's so tiny next to the tall, rotund Molina that she looks like child in their scenes together. And despite a fake caterpillar brow, she's just not believable as a woman bemoaning her disfigurements.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
Why does this chronicle of a passionate life refuse to catch fire? For all of Taymors flashy embellishments -- surreal dream sequences, constructivist collages come to life -- it trudges through the Kahlo chronology with the dutiful step of a conventional Hollywood biopic.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine Peter Rainer
Neither terrible nor excellent; Hayek, who also co-produced, may have obsessed for years about this project, but the result is a fairly standard this-happened-and-that-happened biopic.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Isn't terrible. It's just disappointingly superficial -- a movie that has all the elements necessary to be a fascinating, involving character study, but never does more than scratch the surface.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Skips from episode to episode without illuminating the essence of the woman or her art.
TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Though occasionally enlivened by fanciful sequences suggesting the surreal power of Kahlo's vivid inner life, it's often mired in the mechanical accretion of incidents that blights most biographical films.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Schickel
Julie Taymor's inventiveness has diminished to a kind of strained cuteness. Everything that makes an artist an artist -- the obsessions, the egotism -- is ignored in favor of upbeat movie conventions.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis
(Hayek's) performance is far from a disgrace, but it lacks gravitas and soul, a sense of passionate purpose, a hint of obsession. The best Hayek can do with her lovely face is cloud it with worry, but the face of Frida Kahlo demands anguish.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Hamstrung by a script that seems determined to stop at all the big moments in Frida's life (she died in 1954 at age forty-seven) without giving anything time to resonate.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
I doubt if the results would have satisfied Kahlo, whose originality in matters of life, art, and ideas was vastly more far-reaching.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.7 (out of 10) based on 28 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
gail k gave it a10:
Not sure why this movie is getting such lousy reviews-most reviewers speak to what is lacking in the film-this is a film worth watching if only for its vivid portrayals of characters larger than life. Really you only have an hour and a bit to look at the WHOLE life of an artist and in that respect this film speaks volumes.
Andrea gave it a10:
Great movie. Still, my hopes about this film were not high, so I can even say I enjoyed. Selma Hayek surprised me, positively. I did not expect her to be convincing enough, but she actually made me believe that she is Frida. Alfred Molina also seems to be good choice for the role of Diego Rivera. This movie is not just for Frida Kahlo fans and admirers, everybody should give it a chance.
[Anonymous] gave it a10:
Great performance by Salma Haykek and molina. A gorgeous film!
Shannon P. gave it a 1:
This move is superficial, pretentious, and narcissistic. But what really makes the film such a painful experience to watch is that it is just downright boring. Instead of a human story, we are presented with a series of tedious skits and cliches about artists, socialism, infidelity, and bisexuality. The writing is just plain awful.
Yoon Min C. gave it an 8:
Bold and passionate, as colorful and flavorful as the lives of frida and rivera. the actors are pretty good but the real star of the movie is julie taymor the director. like orson welles, taymor has a background in theatre and burns with ingenuity, wit, and energy. she's unapologetic about her wild expressive style but more crucially, her art derives from a sense of the sacred, from the primordial core from which all creativity springs forth. we need this woman of great spirit when what passes for visual expression today are mtv imagery, rampant CGI, or bloated recycled cliches drenched in blood.
Pat C. gave it a 5:
Really didn't know what the story was about or where it was going until the very end. Being familiar with the reserve inherent in Latin domestic relations, I found their conversion to Hollywood standards inaccurate and offensive. I did develop an appreciation of Kahlo's art, which was obviously deeper and more substantial than this movie. Despite having no major problems, the film refuses to be good. It restricts itself to sketching out only the factual elements, then fills them in with a deep rich shade of B.S.
Kim B. gave it a 10:
Outstanding collaborative work of director, cinematographer, actors and the many many others that give this film its exquisite flavor and poignant moments of the pain and passion of Frida Kahlo. It is unfortunate that the critics betrayed the film's potential to enlighten gringo audiences to the wonder and beauty of Mexico and fascinating layers of its complex history. See it, please. You'll want to read and see more.
